Following the massive popular votes calling for independence in Eastern Ukraine, Western political leaders engaged in a predictable contest of who could throw the biggest stones in a glass house. The referenda held in the…
Tag: Moscow
Russia is taking its time before reacting to Donetsk People’s Republic’s plea to consider its accession into Russia while calling for dialogue between Kiev and the eastern regions. The Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has…
U.S. Media Ignores Putin’s Peace Plan “Let me repeat again, that in Russia’s view, the blame for the crisis in Ukraine lies with those who organized the coup d’etat in Kiev on February…
There are many potentially worrying signs in the ‘de-escalation’ process in theory agreed by the US, Russia, EU and Ukraine this Thursday in Geneva. For starters; the regime changers in power in Kiev did not commit themselves, explicitly, to constitutional reform (the draft language is slippery, to say the least); they did not commit, explicitly, to leaving Ukraine out of NATO; and a minor but still significant point – this was not a joint press conference by the two key players, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry. Arguably, the US State Department is bound to interpret ‘de-escalation’ as a sort of ultimatum to every anti-fascist, pro-autonomy and pro-Russia group in eastern Ukraine, as in ‘disarm or else’. That’s the same logic behind the nefarious March 2011 UN approval of a no-fly zone over Libya.
As the unelected Kiev junta sends armed balaclava-clad paramilitaries to quell protests in Ukraine’s eastern cities it declares the operation «anti-terrorism». The acting (sic) president in Kiev Oleksandr Turchynov has labeled all those seeking political…
It’s hardly a match between equals – as one is playing Monopoly while the other plays chess. It’s as if Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been postponing his checkmate, while US Secretary of State John Kerry increasingly realizes he’s facing the inevitable. Lavrov has explained over and over again, a loose federation is the only possible solution for Ukraine, as part of a “deep constitutional reform”. That would imply ethnic – and even sentimentally – Russian eastern and southern Ukraine would be largely autonomous. Kerry gave signs of agreeing around two weeks ago that Ukrainian regions need more decision power; but then the White House recharged its moral blitzkrieg – coinciding with President Barack Obama’s trip to The Hague and Brussels. Still, even after an inconclusive four-hour Kerry-Lavrov chess match in Paris, there will be a checkmate.
Following a CSTO meeting, Russia announced that it expects explanations about NATO plans to deploy troops in Eastern Europe, warns about “terrorists” plans to obstruct chemical weapons shipments in Syria, and expresses grave concerns about…
Beyond the emphatic cries of the West against the accession of the Crimea to the Russian Federation, the real issue is whether this is an orphan event or whether it foreshadows a turning of Eastern…
But Gershman added that Ukraine was really only an interim step to an even bigger prize — the removal of the strong-willed and independent-minded Putin, who, Gershman added, “may find himself on the losing end…
“… US neocons who have played a key role in engineering the coup in Kiev and this crisis… ” Many Americans have trouble understanding modern Russia or leader Vladimir Putin. That’s in good part because they have little or no understanding of Russia’s history or geopolitics. “The Soviets Union will return” I wrote in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR deprived the Russian imperium of a third of its territory, almost half its people and much of its world power. A similar disaster for Russia occurred in 1918 at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Defeated by the German-Austrian-Bulgarian-Turkish Central Powers in World War I and racked by revolution, Lenin’s new Bolshevik regime bowed to German demands to hand over the Baltic states and allow Ukraine to become independent. As soon as Josef Stalin consolidated power, he began undoing the Brest-Litovsk surrender. The Baltic states, Ukraine, the southern Caucasus and parts of “Greater Romania” were reoccupied. Half of Poland again fell under Russian control.